The Senate confirmation hearing Thursday for White House counterterrorism adviser John Brennan to become CIA director may have been tumultuous in the early going, as protesters had to be ejected. But Brennan himself mostly skated through questioning about the administration’s policy toward the use of drones and legal justification for targeted killings, including of Americans.

And while Brennan pledged his commitment to the greatest possible transparency, it sounded distinctly insincere after an exchange with Sen. Mark Udall.

The plans that a 20-year-old Colorado college student reportedly had to kill President Obama and local school children were detailed and chilling.

Thank goodness authorities were able to thwart his alleged plans before anyone got hurt.

Mitchell Kusick, of Westminster, told police he had practiced with an assault rifle at a Grand Junction firing range, according to a story in the Grand Junction Sentinel.

Kusick, a nursing student at Colorado Mesa University, told his therapist he was planning to use his gun to kill children at Standley Lake High School, according to the Sentinel. He also had been keeping tabs on the president’s campaign schedule.

“Kusick said that he wanted to go down in history as the ‘guy who killed Obama,’ ” according to an affidavit filed in the federal court case against him.

The suspect said he was fascinated by political assassinations, according to a Post story citing court documents, because they are a “major impact” and “changes the course of a nation.”

Alarming stuff.

Comments Off on Day’s Worst: Student who had designs on killing the president

Rep. Mike Coffman broke ranks with fellow Republicans on the murder of four Americans in Libya, according to The Denver Post’s Allison Sherry, condemning the anti-Muhammad filmmakers just as various Obama administration officials – most notably those in the Cairo embassy – have done.

“Unfortunately, the State Department was irresponsible in posting an ambassador and his staff in an unstable country without requiring a U.S. Marine Corps security detachment to protect them,” Coffman said. “It is equally irresponsible for Americans to intentionally attack the Islamic faith for the sole purpose of inflaming tensions while knowingly putting at risk State Department personnel as well as our troops serving us on the ground in Afghanistan.”

It’s easy to repudiate the filmmakers in this instance given the reportedly incendiary nature of their anti-Muhammad critique. But the problem with blaming them for “putting at risk” U.S. personnel is that Islamic extremists object to a wide range of depictions of their religion and its history, many of which are not nearly as provocative. When they want an excuse to riot, they will find one.

How far do we go in this country in urging people to curb their tongues lest they offend a fanatic halfway around the globe?

No, the reason extremist mobs are threatening American lives and government facilities in the Middle East is very simple: Too many people in the Muslim world do not believe in freedom of expression. It is not because some provocateur made a crude and heavy handed 14-minute movie trailer.

Eleven years ago tomorrow, we watched in disbelief as the World Trade Center towers collapsed, killing nearly 3,000 people. In the video above, you can watch One World Trade Center go up in their place.

Would the vast majority of Americans support some sort of taxpayer subsidy to operate a memorial to the thousands who lost their lives in New York City on 9/11? Absolutely.

But how would they feel if they knew the price tag could be $20 million annually? That’s the question we’re left to ponder by an Associated Press story on the status of the National Sept. 11 Memorial and Museum.

The article points out that the memorial is expected to have an annual operating budget of $60 million, but that officials with the foundation that runs it and some elected officials — notably Govs. Andrew Cuomo and Chris Christie — are asking the American public to pick up as much as a third of the tab. To put that figure in perspective, the article notes that the National Park Service budgets for Gettysburg and Pearl Harbor this year are $8.4 million and $3.6 million, respectively.

Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., stepped forward earlier this year to block a bill that would have authorized the $20 million annual appropriation, demanding that sponsors find commensurate cuts in the federal budget to pay for the project.

A provocative commentary today by The Denver Post’s Chuck Murphy raises the question of whether James Holmes’ preparations for mass murder would also have gone undetected had he been a Muslim. In exploring this issue, he quotes local Imam Ibrahim Kazerooni complaining that “this guy literally arms himself to the teeth by mail order without anyone pointing a finger and saying, ‘What’s going on?’ If my name is Ibrahim or Mohammed and I order a gun or that much ammunition on the Internet, I think within a few hours of the delivery, the FBI and CIA is at my house.”

Murphy – and Kazerooni — may be onto something. Neighbors, delivery people and others who came into contact with Holmes – such as the gun club owner in Byers who thought “What is this idiot trying to be?” after listening to Holmes’ voice message – might well have been more vigilant and eager to report any worries they had to authorities (if they actually had any) if he’d appeared to be a Muslim immigrant. And federal officials obviously spend much more time taking notice, say, of young Saudi-American or Afghan-American males who take trips to Pakistan than they do Ph.D. candidates who withdraw from their studies and buy guns legally online, even though individuals in both groups are capable of undertaking a killing rampage.

However, given the recent history of terrorism not just here but around the world, it would be quite surprising if the public and police did not behave this way. In fact, you could say the behavior is entirely rational.

The danger is not that many people may have an image of a “typical terrorist” in their minds and thus are more alert to genuinely suspicious activity by certain individuals than by others. Rather, the danger is that sometimes people can become paranoid and imagine or assume suspicious activity purely because someone is Muslim, or investigate a group solely for that reason, as seems to have been the case in New York City.

That’s what should concern us in a nation governed by the Bill of Rights.

The Arizona senator lived up to his maverick label by calling out a fellow Republican lawmaker for comments that an aide to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton might be part of a Muslim Brotherhood conspiracy.

On the Senate floor, McCain said Huma Abedin “represents what is best about America: the daughter of immigrants, who has risen to the highest levels of our government on the basis of her substantial personal merit and her abiding commitment to the American ideals that she embodies so fully.”

McCain went so far as to call the accusations against Abedin “sinister.”

House Speaker John Boehner, an Ohio Republican, followed McCain with supportive words for Abedin. Boehner said he did not know Abedin well, but that “from everything that I know of her she has a sterling character. I think accusations like this being thrown around are pretty dangerous.”

The foolishness at issue is being perpetrated by U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn. Bachmann and a small group of House Republicans are fanning the flames on a conspiracy theory that Abedin is possibly connected via her family to the Muslim Brotherhood, and that group is attempting to gain access to high levels of the U.S. government.

It’s important for Republican congressional leadership to push back against extremists — especially when they are members of their own party.

The Counterterrorism Education Learning Lab, or CELL, which is dedicated to preventing terrorism through education, held a grand re-opening with former Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff.

The event Thursday night in Denver featured the opening of the center’s new exhibit, which includes a piece of steel plucked from the rubble of the World Trade Center. The exhibit is open to the public at its headquarters adjacent to the Denver Art Museum The Denver Post was a sponsor of the event.

The CELL is a non-profit entity that organizes public events and has an interactive exhibit designed to give visitors an understanding of the history, methods and societal impacts of terrorism.

It’s an important center for critical thought and we’re happy to see the CELL back, and better than ever.

Over the years I’ve sometimes been asked by supporters of Ron Paul why I don’t take him more seriously despite my own libertarian leanings on many issues. One of the reasons was on display in Monday’s GOP debate in Florida, namely Paul’s penchant for blaming the U.S. for the murderous hostility of Islamic jihadists.

It’s one thing to have opposed U.S. intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq, or to call for a significantly smaller military budget. Fine. But it’s despicable to assert, as Paul did Monday night, that “we’re under great threat because we occupy so many countries” (my emphasis), as if that were a useful explanation for 9/11. “We’re in 130 countries,” he added. “… if we think that we can do that and not have retaliation, we’re kidding ourselves.”

Paul went on to recite Osama bin Laden‘s stated reasons for terror attacks (before retreating somewhat under a barrage of boos), and compared the U.S. with China. “We have to be honest with ourselves,” he said. “What would we do if another country, say, China, did to us what we do to all those countries over there?”

In Paul’s view, apparently, every foreign intervention is equally vile, no matter who the intervening country might support or what that country’s motives might be. His moral equivalence is ugly.

Protestors demonstrate the use of water boarding to volunteer Maboud Ebrahim Zadeh, Monday, Nov. 5, 2007, in front of the Justice Department in Washington. The demonstration was to highlight the use of water boarding as torture, to protest the nomination of Attorney General-designate Michael Mukasey.

Those who defended “enhanced interrogation techniques” – waterboarding and the like – during the George W. Bush years are feeling their oats today. They’re crowing that the application of psychological and physical pressure on key terrorists may have provided intelligence that eventually helped pinpoint Osama bin Laden’s whereabouts.

And maybe it did, although as John Podoretz of Commentary rightly cautions, “The truth is that there is far too much we don’t know here, and many people who are talking about the events surrounding the intelligence themselves know absolutely nothing about what went down…”

Vincent Carroll is The Denver Post's editorial page editor. He has been writing commentary on politics and public policy in Colorado since 1982 and was originally with the Rocky Mountain News, where he was also editor of the editorial pages until that newspaper gave up the ghost in 2009.

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